Walter Sisulu

Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu (18 May 1912 – 5 May 2003) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress (ANC).

Sisulu was born in 1912 in Ngcobo in the Union of South Africa, part of what is now the Eastern Cape province (then the Transkei).

Not unusual for his generation in South Africa, he was not certain of his birthday, but celebrated it on 18 May.

His mother, Alice Mase Sisulu, was a Xhosa domestic worker and his father, Albert Victor Dickinson, was a white civil servant and magistrate.

He founded Sitha Investments in 1939.

It was situated at Barclay Arcade between West Street and Commissioner Street in the business district of Johannesburg.

Its objective was to help black and Indian people buy houses.

During its operations, Sitha was the only black-owned real estate agency in South Africa.

Dickinson did not play a part in his son's upbringing: Sisulu reportedly met him only once, in the 1940s, before he died in the 1970s.

Sisulu and his sister, Rosabella, were raised by his mother's family, who were descended from the Thembu clan.

He was close with his uncle, Dyantyi Hlakula, who was passionate about Xhosa culture and who oversaw his initiation.

Although he was technically of mixed race, Sisulu identified strongly as black and as Xhosa.

In his mid-teens, Sisulu left school – an Anglican mission school – to find work.

In Johannesburg, he worked a range of jobs, including as a bank teller, gold miner, domestic worker, and baker.

He was fired from the bakery for trying to organise his co-workers.

In 1940, Sisulu joined the African National Congress (ANC), which had been founded in the year of his birth.

The following year, Nelson Mandela moved to Johannesburg and was introduced to Sisulu, who by then was well connected among the city 's activist class.

Sisulu later said, '' I had no hesitation, the moment I met him, that this is the man I need" – the man, that is, "for leading the African people". Sisulu encouraged Mandela to join the ANC, occasionally contributed to his law school tuition, and introduced him to his first wife, Evelyn Mase, who was Sisulu's maternal relative.

In 1943, together with Mandela and Oliver Tambo, he joined the ANC Youth League, founded by Anton Lembede, of which he was initially the treasurer.

He later distanced himself from Lembede after Lembede, who died in 1947, had ridiculed his parentage.

The Youth League's drive for a more militant posture was given further fuel in 1948, when the National Party (NP) won national elections on a platform of legislating apartheid.

Between terms as ANC Secretary-General (1949–1954) and ANC Deputy President (1991–1994), he was Accused No.2 in the Rivonia Trial and was incarcerated on Robben Island where he served more than 25 years' imprisonment for his anti-Apartheid revolutionary activism.

In December 1949, at the ANC's 38th National Conference, the Youth League leadership carried out a "remarkable putsch", which successfully installed several younger and more militant members onto the party's National Executive Committee – including Sisulu, who was elected ANC Secretary-General.

The League also tabled a broad Programme of Action, which was notable for its explicit emphasis on African nationalism and mass mobilisation techniques.

He had a close partnership with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, with whom he played a key role in organising the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the establishment of the ANC Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe.

He was also on the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party.

The culmination of this new strategy was the 1952 Defiance Campaign of passive resistance.

Sisulu was on the planning council for the campaign and was arrested for his participation.

In December, he and other organisers, including ANC President James Moroka, were found guilty of "statutory communism" under the remarkably broad Suppression of Communism Act, but had their sentences – nine months' imprisonment with hard labour – suspended for two years.

After 1952, he was jailed seven times in the next ten years, including five months in 1960, and was held under house arrest in 1962.

Sisulu, along with several others, formed part of an ANC delegation to the 1953 World Democratic Youth meeting in Bucharest, Romania; before returning to South Africa, the group also travelled to Warsaw, Poland, to London, to Israel, and to the People's Republic of China, where Sisulu was part of a meeting with the Chinese Communist Party leadership.

In 1955, Sisulu, Mandela, and Ahmed Kathrada watched the Congress of the People gathering – which adopted the Freedom Charter – from a nearby rooftop, unable to attend the meeting because of the banning orders against them.

By this time, Sisulu was active not only in the ANC but also, covertly, in the South African Communist Party (SACP).

Paul Landau, a historian of the ANC, has argued that Sisulu and Mandela were the crucial forces, both intellectually and practically, behind the ANC's "turn to violence" (that is, to armed struggle against the government) at the turn of the decade.

At the Treason Trial (1956–1961), he was eventually sentenced to six years, but was released on bail pending his appeal.

When Umkhonto we Sizwe was established in 1961, Sisulu served on its High Command.

He went underground in 1963, resulting in his wife, Albertina Sisulu, becoming the first woman to be arrested under the so-called 90 Day Act, the General Laws Amendment Act of 1963, which allowed the state to detain suspects for up to 90 days without charging them.

He was caught at Rivonia on 11 July, along with Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and 14 others.

At the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial, Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964.